By Dru Barcelo
During last year’s unforgotten 2016 election campaign, Trump and his administration vilified Hillary Clinton for the use of a private email server to conduct business, resulting in her loss in the race for presidency.
This past Monday, September 25th, 2017, Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, has allegedly traded work-related emails using a private server since December of last year.
Beyond the hypocrisy of the situation, considering the fact that Kushner is already under siege due to his meetings with Kremlin allies, Intelligence committees must look into the actual emails themselves that have been exchanged. Kushner’s attorney insisted that fewer than 100 relevant emails were exchanged on the server from January through August.
“Mr. Kushner uses his White House email address to conduct White House business,” Abbe Lowell, a lawyer for Kushner, said in a statement Sunday.
Though the news may seem damaging at face value, we must take into account that no actual emails have been released that contain classified information. A person who reviewed the emails has stated that emails contain no traces of classified information, which would be a strong fighting point for Kushner’s attorney.
House Democratic investigators won’t be letting this go. Earlier Monday they stated that they intended to probe Kushner’s use of a private email address, especially to investigate whether there is correlation to any possible collusion with the Russian Government.
There are Senators, such as Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, suggesting that their panels might look into Kushner’s private emails, depending on their content.
Warner would go on to comment that “the scope of the inquiry is not focused on emails. But if these were in any way used to hide anything that might have had something to do with Russians that would obviously be relevant.”
Democrats won’t be letting Kushner get off the hook so easily. It is evident that they are seeking more information about the content of the emails, especially emphasizing that Republicans had previously demanded the content of Clinton’s personal emails to attempt to determine whether she mishandled classified information.
